Blogged this at Labourhome

Another one I just put on www.labourhome.org. I like the crowd over there. It's stuff I've done before here but I still don't know the answer. Maybe a helpful banker will tell me one day.

Show me the money!

I need some expert help. OK, I know that the current financial crisis was caused by lack of regulation and allowing the markets to govern themselves. And I know that because we had to bail out the banks with jillions of pounds we are in terrible debt, so much so that we have to cut social spending and our children's children will still be paying it off long after we are dead. I'm told that if we hadn't done this the financial system for the entire world would have crashed and we would all be very poor.

What I don't know is where did all the money we gave the banks end up. I've asked this on a number of sites and nobody seems sure. I mean if we say to a bank, "Here's a couple of billion, Fred", where is that money now? It can't still be in the bank vault surely. Neither Brown, Darling or the civil servants have really told us.

So the banks were going broke and their customers were saying, "We want our money back". The banks didn't have the money as they were sitting on sub-prime mortgages or suchlike. If we didn't give the banks money then they would have defaulted and these customers would have lost their money.

Of course the small customers were already covered by government bank insurance so I suspect that most of the readers of this blog would still have their money. Some of the money would probably belong to pension funds, charities and local authorities but one has to suspect that much of it has gone to very rich people. You know people that have far more money than would be covered by the small depositor insurance. I'm thinking of Russian oligarchs, oil rich sheiks, Swiss bankers, hedge fund managers and people like David Cameron and the other 16 millionaires on the Tory front bench.

I smiled when someone told me that Michael Caine was saying he would leave the UK because of the 50% tax. I wonder if some of his deposits were saved by the rest of the tax payers. See Michael, "Not many people know that".

I can't argue if people tell me that if we hadn't bailed the banks out we would have far larger problems than if we had let them fail, covered the small depositors, and then cherry-picked the best bits for nationalization. They would say, "Les, if we had done that then the reputation of the City of London would have gone down the tubes." Sure I know that since we no longer have any manufacturing or industry in the UK, we have to have all these financial geniuses in the City bringing in the money we need to pay for bits and bobs from China.

I accept all this as all three major parties say it's so, but will someone please show me where the money went. If Michael Caine, David Cameron and Fred Goodwin have some of it, I might go and ask for it back.

How to handle Russian oligarchs

On today's BBC website there is a strange story of how Putin bullied and humiliated billionaire businessman Oleg Deripaska last week. On live TV, he stood over the embarrassed oligarch and forced him to sign on the dotted line to reopen an aluminium plant he had just closed. It was almost old Joe Stalin in action which is fitting as Putin does seem to show Stalinist tendencies.

Maybe another leader who has show Stalinist tendencies, not least in internal Labour Party affairs, Gordon Brown, could use the same tactics with the LDV closure in the UK. If he's not sure where Oleg is at the moment, he can ask Oleg's friend Peter Mandelson.

Oleg Deripaska is well known to the UK because George Osbourne leaked the story that Mandelson was having a free holiday on Oleg's yacht off Corfu. This caused suspicions because actions taken by Mandelson when he was an EU commissioner over the tax on imported aluminium increased Deripaska's already great wealth. (There is no proof that Mandelson or those close to him gained financially from these actions except for this luxury holiday in Corfu. Peter Mandelson lives in a £2.5 million villa in London.)

George Osbourne didn't get away unblemished by the affair as he knew Mandelson was there because he also visited Oleg on the yacht. The yacht was moored off of Osbourne friend Nat Rothschild's villa and it was Rothschild, a rich hedge fund manager, who introduced them. Rothschild considered that Osbourne had broken a confidence so then made public that Osbourne had been there to ask Oleg for a donation to the Tory Party via his ownership of LDV.

What a complicated corrupt little world these people live in.

Another post at Labourhome

I do like seeing where our politicians came from. Gordon Brown turned his thesis on the Scottish socialist James Maxton into a book. At the time he considered him a hero. Now I suspect he would expel him from the Labour Party if he had a chance. I posted this on http://www.labourhome.org/.

I read someone accusing Tony Blair of being a new Ramsay MacDonald a few years back. I think it's more Gordon Brown who has a bit of MacDonald (see picture) in him. His 'government of all the talents' was sure to make historians think of MacDonald's National Government.

From "Maxton" by Gordon Brown 1986

"The Clydeside Brigade* travelled to Westminster as a group. With salaries of only £400 a year, and no travelling expenses paid, most travelled down sleeping on the seats and floors of third class compartments."

Back in a time when to be a Labour MP was a vocation not a career choice. There are still Labour members who would do this for their beliefs, but they don’t get on the shortlists. I hope Blears, Purnell and the rest read this and feel shame, but I doubt they will do either.

* This was the group of Glasgow Labour MPs, including James Maxton, elected in the 1922 election.

From the Labourhome blog

This is a copy of the first article I posted over at http://www.labourhome.org/. I thought I had better keep a record of them here too. Like the post before this, it's me feeling that the New Labour idea has lost any momentum and we just watching it die now.

Is the experiment coming to an end?

In 1994 the biggest experiment in British politics since the Second World War began. 15 years down the line it looks like it’s coming to the end. Back then the Labour Party made a deal with Blair, Brown and those about them like Campbell and Mandelson. The deal was Labour would be electable if it gave total control of the party to these people and dropped its old ideals, traditions and ways of working.

Now before we all berate ourselves it should be remembered that at the previous election Kinnock had led the party to defeat against Major, and prior to that Thatcher had been punishing every Labour attempt to regain power. In hindsight we could say we didn’t really need a Blair to win the next election as the Tory government was in meltdown, much like the present Labour one.

What should be said is that Blair went on to win two more elections, but again it could be argued that the Tories were still in a suicidal frame of mind during this period. Looking back on this deal between the Labour Party and its new leadership we see the latter mostly lived up to their part. One part of the deal that they didn’t though was the promise of more party democracy, which has since been curtailed so much by the leadership. What activist hadn’t reckoned on was how little would be achieved in 13 years of Labour power. Trying to find progressive policies amongst the many conservative ones is quite hard. Compared to the six years of Atlee’s first government they have done next to nothing.

As with any experiment, we are testing a theory to see if it is correct. When the New Labour idea was finally tested it failed miserably. First test was whether it could hand over power to a new leader. From this we ended up with a PLP coronation. Next was its first financial crisis and recession while in power and it had no policies for the situation. The only answer was to dump the free market policies it had been following, shore up the banks and return to Keynesian ideas the party had followed before they came along. The third test was the trust that Labour MPs are basically honest. This was destroyed as the expenses scandals came out and one after another Blair follower was found with their hands in the till.

Let’s look at what New Labour bought us. Of course we should have been suspicious when Blair and Mandelson started their campaign before John Smith was in the ground. It was a pointer to the total lack of principles of this new movement with many more to come. It was to Americanise politics in the UK. To have two main parties with no basic policy differences, just a difference in compassion. To make elections almost presidential with the charisma of the leaders the main vote catcher. (Aren’t Cameron and Clegg just Blair clones?) To have people like Campbell to spin, lie and create the sound-bites instead of sensible discussion. Was it any wonder that the MPs that signed up to this new deal with no principles or ideals ended up stealing from the public through their expenses?

So when the experiment ends what will come next? If the Labour party ends up as some European style Social Democrat party that Roy Jenkins wanted it will fight for the same ground that the Liberals now have, as Jenkins found out. Was the party under the leadership of Kinnock and Smith a better place to be? I suspect so, even with all the infighting, it still had some of that broad church feel. Is there another place we should be heading; is there another ‘new’ experiment to come? Maybe, but we had better be a bit more cautious this time.

Is the New Labour experiment finally over?

It's had 15 years but with the first recession they have faced while being the government New Labour is falling to pieces. Now their spin doctors are trying to remove the "New"; if anyone's to blame, let it be the whole Labour Party. The Blairites are biding their time to put the knife into the Brown. Hazel Blears who has managed to fiddle £13,000 in taxes owed, goes in such a way as to make Gordon Brown suffer the most. Rumours are that she is organizing the rebellion.

The truth is once tested New Labour failed. The reason I think is it was always a grouping that turned its back on Labour's history and traditions and had no real principles to replace the old ones with. What Blair and Brown were offering the public was a better Tory party and while the Tories were committing suicide with sleaze and right wing policies it left a space for New Labour. As the Tories moved back to a center right position, this spot got crowded. We find the Liberals to left of the Labour Party which just shouldn't be.

The lack of principles gave the Parliamentary Labour Party a yuppie careerist look that Cameron's Tories now do better. I feel it was this lack of principles that sees so many of these New Labour MPs in deep expense trouble. The lack of internal party democracy will for a time support the New Labour leadership but eventually it will have to be replaced.

We need to look at why Blair and Brown managed to take over the party because there were reasons that allowed this. Michael Foot was a disaster and Neil Kinnock not much better. We must also not forget that Militant gave them an excuse to curtail the internal democracy. If we acknowledge what went wrong before it makes it less likely it will happen again.

What we should learn is we must never trade principles for power and hopefully the experiment is coming to an end.

Return the power to the people.

So Gordon Brown has asked Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) to decide which MPs should be deselected. The sub-committee which will do this will chaired by Blairite Kath Speight, (see picture), the NEC's chairperson. We can expect then that those close to Brown and Blair will escape punishment by the party. I would be very surprised if the NEC went after Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith, Tony McNulty, Ed Balls & wife, Geoff Hoon and the chief whip, Nick Brown.

Who will not get any say in deselection are the constituencies these people represent via their constituency parties (CLPs). The power to choose Labour Party candidates was taken away from the local parties years ago, but Kinnock, Blair and company made it even more difficult as a way of stopping entrists like Militant choosing. That may or may not have been correct at the time, but now there is no need to guard the central leadership's power quite so closely. This power has been misused badly with shortlists and cronies parachuted in.

Let the CLPs decide if they want to deselect these and other expense thieves in the party. If the party feels it necessary they can have the right to refuse a prospective replacement but they must stop the forcing of favourites on the local parties. Even Blair had to go through this process. No more shortcuts! No more Georgia Goulds.

Brown Loses Gurkha Vote - Time to Go

Brown lost the vote on new Gurkha immigration rules, quite rightly in my opinion. See my post two back. What was interesting was the numbers of the Labour MPs either voting against or abstaining. If my arithmetic is correct of the 356 MPs they have 83 didn't vote and 27 voted against.

Now it might be too much to ask for that wowser Phil Woolas and his boss Jacqui Smith resign. (She has quite a few issues she could resign over.) It's certainly too much to ask Gordon Brown to make way for a leadership contest. But the numbers are there. Of these 110 MPs surely enough know that it's time for a real change if they are to have any chance in next year's election.

So where has all the money gone!

What Brown, Darling, Cameron and Osborne have in common in this financial crisis is it was correct to save the banks and because of the cost of doing this with taxpayers money things like health and education will be cut. The differences will be in how big the cuts are. The Tories are reverting to old style Thatcherism so forget all about the hug-a-hoody PR.

I read on the BBC website that Mandelson said soundbites are not dead. How about this one then? Following on from Tom Cruise's "Show me the money" in Jerry Maguire, "Follow the money".

Now I'm sure there are good reasons for keeping the banks solvent, bailing them out so they can repay the people they owe money to may be a good thing. Maybe the future earnings and tax income of the City investment banks justifies paying off the present investors in them and keeping London's reputation untarnished among the rich and powerful. If this is the case shouldn't Darling show us the maths?

Now don't confuse saving the banks with small depositors savings or even bank workers jobs. Deposit insurance protects the former and nationalization after bankruptcy would take care of the latter. All I am saying is there was an alternative, bank failure, to throwing billions at the banks. It might not have been the best option but it would be nice to know why not.

So where did the money go? Who had invested in all these failing funds and bad investment instruments at the banks? I wonder whose names would come up. For sure from the UK would be the pension funds. So we have indirectly bailed out some pension funds but that doesn't stop Mandelson talking about the problem of funding the Post Office workers pensions needing outside money. Who else? Must be some UK based hedge funds I guess but then I would be looking overseas. How about the Russian oligarchs, the oil rich Arab sheikdoms and the money that the Chinese have been putting out on the world markets instead of raising the standard of living of their own people. On top of that we would find the rich and famous both from the UK and overseas. Probably find we bailed out the Blairs and the Camerons.

Wouldn't it be nice to know?

Phil Woolas - What a Wowser

From Wikipedia - Wowser: The Australian writer C.J. Dennis defined it thus: 'Wowser: an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder'.

So what is going through the mind of Immigration Minister Phil Woolas? He says that in a worse case it would mean 100,000 immigrants coming in if he allowed ex-Gurkha servicemen to settle in the UK. I just saw him on TV saying that if he allowed in the Gurkhas it would open the door to other groups to go get a court ruling. Are there other groups that the UK owes as much to as the Gurkhas? If so we should let them in also.

Woolas shows all the worst in New Labour. He's the man behind the counter at the dole office, the petty bureaucrats that run our health service, and all those well paid administration jobs that Blair and Brown have created. What they can't see that everyone else in the country can, is they are shooting themselves in the foot every time they open their mouths. The tabloids couldn't have made it up. We have a wheelchair bound, VC wearing, Gurkha next to Joanna Lumley protesting outside parliament.

You wouldn't mind as much if it was just one New Labour groupie, but like the Mandelson Post Office statements, Gordon Brown jumps right behind with support. Brown must go and better before the election than after.

At last a choice.

I have been getting a little too one-eyed recently and allowing my dislike of New Labour and the sleaze around them to miss some important choices coming up ahead. The Tories and New Labour are beginning to split away in how to deal with the economic crisis. Up until now Brown, and Blair before him, have been following the economic ideas of Milton Friedman who inspired Thatcher and Reagan. This did not give David Cameron much room to maneuver. John Maynard Keynes, pictured, and his ideas were consigned to the dustbin of history. Now it's beginning to change. As Brown starts to look for Keynesian answers to the crisis Cameron has stayed true to Thatcherism.

As much as the Tories would rather not get tied down on policies before the election, and many of the voters will let their dislike of New Labour control their vote, the election will have an enormous effect on the standard of living of most British voters. Now I cannot pretend to be an expert on economics, but seeing that the experts have got it so wrong recently I will try and explain what I feel is the difference between the parties policies and the results this might give.

I will start with the Tories as this is the easy one. It's now clear that David Cameron will not try and spend his way out of the recession/depression. This is the pure laissez-faire much favoured in the past by the likes of Thatcher and Enoch Powell. Companies and banks in trouble will be allowed to fold. As less people are at work and able to pay tax, social services will be cut. The government will rely on charities to support the weakest. We will start to see deflation and a depression like that of the 1930's will occur. We will see strife on the streets. Those with considerable cash savings will benefit although house prices will tumble as more default on their mortgages. In the end the middle class will be hurt along with those underneath but the very rich will get away without too much pain. This will be explained by Cameron as not allowing future generation to be saddled with the enormous debt.

Now to New Labour. Brown and some of the others seem to have had a road to Damascus moment and are seeing the dangers in a Thatcherite answer to the crisis which following those ideas has led them into. It might be that some of these New Labour ministers can't bring themselves to break from old ideas and there are rumours that Alistair Darling may resign if forced to keep on spending. So what is the Keynesian response to the crisis? Basically it is to spend our way out of the recession. It will need money printed and acceptance of inflation to work. What they are attempting is to buy growth. This was how FDR pulled the US out of the depression, although the war may have contributed also.

What effect would New Labour's policies have? Well because of inflation, unless interest rates rise fast, those with cash savings will see the real value decline. It will be hard to see this policy propping up housing prices, or at least the real property value after inflation, but the fall could be less than that with depression and deflation. If we get the desired growth, then those in the middle class and lower may see a smaller drop in their standard of living than otherwise. Inflation will of course make the government debt smaller in real value. The danger is stagflation where we have the inflation but no growth which is a possibility as the damage to the economy is already so great. That could put us into a pre-war German-like situation. One of the problems that could lead us in that direction would be if the government was forced to protect the exchange rate or get finance for the government debt by raising interest rates.

So we are caught between a rock and a hard place and a decision will have to be made. The Tories would much rather we didn't think about the outcome of their policies while Labour has no guarantee that theirs will work. I know what way I'm leaning, but I suspect that Brown and Blair have created such a bad smell that it will make no difference.

12 Years Too Late!

Gordon Brown, quoted on the BBC website says the following. "Laissez-faire has had its day. People on the centre-left and the progressive agenda should be confident enough to say that the old idea that the markets were efficient and could work things out by themselves are gone."

Unfortunately this statements negates the economic policy that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came in with 12 years ago and followed until the banking system crashed. They worshipped Thatcher's policies and now Brown is going to lead the Labour Party into its biggest defeat since the 1931 post-MacDonald election.

If there really are 120 Labour MPs who are willing to go against the New Labour leadership in support of the Post Office workers then now is the time to be looking at a leadership election that will allow all the party to have a say. Otherwise it's just posturing like Peter Hain and Harriet Harman have been doing. Labour needs a caretaker leader to clean out those who turned their backs on the basic principles of the party. There must be one moderate MP who is not beholden to the Blairites surely.

Guilty Men

Guilty Men was published in 1940 naming and calling for the retirement of those politicians responsible for the policy of appeasement with Hitler's Germany. Within weeks it had sold over 200,000 copies. It would be interesting today to see who would be named for responsibility of today's economic crisis.

James Crosby, pictured right, would be an easy target. He was in charge of HBOS during its most badly managed period and managed to fire the compliance manager who tried to warn the bank of the problems it was getting into. Yes the bankers are responsible but they couldn't have done what they did with the help of the politicians. Both in the UK and the US politicians from Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan through to the Blair/Brown and GW Bush have done all they could to remove regulation that controlled the worst of the financial industry's scams and frauds.

Gordon Brown must carry some of this blame, but I suspect we will never hear him say he's sorry. He will continue to say it was an international problem outside of his control. Crosby was his favourite banker and Brown made him 2nd. in command of the regulators, the FSA, that should have been monitoring what the banks were up to. Now making a poacher the gamekeeper is fine and often works but it does rely on the poacher knowing that poaching was wrong. For the promotion and honours given to James Crosby, Brown should at least apologise.

For being a bad driver you can be sent to prison even if an accident wasn't intentional. Let's see some bankers in prison for the bad management they gave while driving the country into this economic crisis.

When will they ever learn?

New Labour is in trouble for its spin again. "No more boom and bust" is already haunting Gordon Brown and they let him have "British jobs for British workers" in his party conference speech. Now that construction workers are going on strike in agreement with him, do the spin doctors feel foolish or are they too thick skinned.

What was this British jobs for British workers meant for; what does it mean. It was just a sound bite to catch the evening news. It was to undercut the Tories by being more to the right of them again. Maybe the trouble with telling lies is when people believe you rather than when they don't.

Catching Flash Gordon

I'm the same age as Gordon. I thought he was younger. As a young man I was a revolutionary socialist, but now I believe in reform and a mixed economy. Like many as I've grown older I guess I've moved to the right. I know there are exceptions like Tony Benn, but this cooling of revolutionary ardour does seem quite common.


What I can't imagine is ever catching up with Gordon's rightward shift. Am I mistaken in thinking he was once a socialist? I don't think so because this man wrote a sensitive biography of Scottish socialist James Maxton in 1986, although admittedly for his PhD. Maxton's whole life was built on his defense of the poor, the unemployed and low paid workers, especially in Glasgow.


So how can Brown support James Purnell, his public school educated Minister for Work and Pensions, in his attacks on those on benefits. This 'work for benefits' sounds fine but look to the position of the poor and the inner cities in the US to see what we will be getting. The reasons we have a problem with large-scale long term unemployment is that Thatcher's government dismantled so much industry and took away the dignity of labour for many. To New Labour's shame they made no attempt to repair the damage so they must accept some of the blame.

I do wish Brown would read his own Maxton book again.

Blair Groupies Now Like Gordon

Yesterday I posted that Mandelson coming back into the cabinet must have meant that the ultra-Blairites had cut a deal with Brown. To add strength to that supposition we have one of the Blairites, George Howarth, on the BBC's website saying that he no longer wants a leadership election. Are there really no Labour MPs that will at least put up a fight, even if just over fear of losing their seats?

Brown and Blair were not the first.

Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair, were not the first Labour leaders to continue Thatcher-like policies after they replaced a Tory leader. In fact Thatcher-like policies didn't start with Thatcher but were a throwback to a much earlier age.

For some reason UK TV is going through a period of re-examining Doctor Richard Beeching's destruction of the postwar nationalized British railways. It's about 45 years since his first report that started the axing of so much of the railway infrastructure. The Wilson government of 1964 continued his policies although in their election statements they said they would save the axed lines.

Beeching was a appointed as the highest paid UK civil servant of the time, 1961, by the conservative Minister of Transport and crook, Ernest Marples. Marples had interests in road building companies that he moved into his wife's name while as Minister of Transport, he did his best to increase road transport and decrease that on rail. He had to live the last few years of his life in the tax shelter of Monaco on the run from the UK tax authorities and various court cases started against him. He was a typical Thacherite conservative long before Thatcher's takeover of the party came about.

The person who most resembles Marples today is actually the US vice-president. I wonder if Dick Cheney will spend the last few years of his life in the tax shelter of Dubai, the new head office town of Haliburton, on the run from the US legal system?

The lesson from the Beeching reports, which led to the closure of 25% of the UK's railway mileage and 50% of the stations, were not learnt by governments up until this day. If you close basic infrastructure for purely economic reasons without taking any public need into account, it is very hard to get it back later. Whether it's railways or national health services, profit should not be the governing force. The needs of the public should have the highest priority.

He's done more for homophobia than Sol Campbell

Well this was unexpected. Probably the most disliked man in any of the previous Blair cabinets shows up once again. I guess it explains why Brown was given an easy time by the Blair groupies at the Labour Party Conference. He's cut a deal to let some of them back into power. No matter what personality clashes there were, it wasn't hard politically as Brown invented the New Labour idea. I see the other Miliband, Ed, also gets promoted.

Any more thoughts of Gordon Brown turning back to old Labour ideals must be now forgotten. It will be unlikely that any real change will be made in the party until he leads them to a terrible defeat, which he is on course to.

Reasons to Dump Brown - Part 4

Labour is in danger of matching its 1931 election results if it can not hang onto the safe seats in Scotland. Back then, after Ramsey MacDonald had deserted the party, they were reduced to 52 seats. With the Gordon Brown impersonator, Wendy Alexander, as leader of the Scottish Labour Party is it any surprise that Labour lost its traditional support in Glasgow? (I wrote this without even realizing she had alreay resigned almost a month before because of sleaze. Things are looking up.)

Today we have union leaders Paul Kenny and Tony Woodley calling for change, one for a new party leader and the other for a return to more traditional policies. In reality one without the other will not save the party from a terrible disaster in the next election. So what has gone wrong?

I suspect it all started with Kinnock. The moment the party lost the balance of three power centers in the party, the constituency party, the parliamentary party and the unions making decision and gave instead the parliamentary party absolute power in all but words the rot set in. Of course it looked so good when Blair could win elections after years of Tory governments but it was based on policies without principles.

In 1997 Labour just had to be there. The Tories were committing suicide over Europe and with sleaze, and the public wanted them gone. In 2001 and just about in 2005 Blair could show that New Labour made better Tories than the Tories themselves. Now it looks like the Tories are back to being the best right wing party in the UK.

There was a hope that Brown might change direction after Blair went, but this was a false hope as it was Brown who had been inventing the policies of the Blair governments. For the leadership contest only 29 of the 356 Labour MPs had the courage to try and force a leadership election which included the other sections of the party. This was 16 shy of the minimum needed.

Of course most MPs are pretty selfish individuals who will do what is best for themselves but now they must realize they have not only hurt the party but also put those, even with what had been regarded as safe seats, in danger of not getting re-elected, even as opposition MPs next time.

This year there must be a leadership challenge and it must go out to the whole party. Are there 45 MPs who will do the job? Here's what the union bosses are now saying.

Tony Woodley - "The change people want - in Glasgow and around the country - is a change of political approach. Blairism should finally be buried in Glasgow's East End."

"For too long the government has put all its eggs in the free-market basket. People are now looking for more support and protection from government as we face serious economic difficulties rooted in City excesses."

Paul Kenny - "The MPs have got to make a strong decision as to whether they want to go into an election with Gordon Brown or have a [leadership] contest."

Reasons to Dump Brown - Part 3

As a young man I criticized Labour for being reformist rather than revolutionary. Now, much older and liking reformism, I can't find any reformist tendencies in New Labour. The closest we get with get to any reforms after 11 years in government is more Thatcherism in privatization. Although often called reforms what Thatcher was doing was turning the clock back to days of more laissez faire capitalism.

The reason a reformist government needs to be the opposite of a laissez faire conservative one is that we need central economic planning to take on the likes of big oil, the drug companies and the banks. Instead we get in today's news a story that really sums up the Blair/Brown policies.

We have some lickspittle in Brown's cabinet, James Purnell, regurgitating the old Tory attack on social security claimants, a work for your benefits and end disability payments diatribe.

David Cameron quite rightly accuses the government of stealing Conservative Party policies regarding the proposed benefits changes. Are there any brave souls left amongst the Labour MPs to stand against the Thatcherites that control the party.

Reasons to Dump Brown - Part 2

What's in a name. Privatisation, selling off the family silver, selling the crown jewels, all pretty much the same thing. We can add Brown's favourite, "public-private partnership", to that list. We have to remember that he is a Thacherite when it comes to the public services.

We are told that private companies are more efficient than public ones, so why is it that every time we hear a public service in trouble we find a private company not doing the job. Brown pushed for his public-private partnership to do the London Underground maintenance and it was a disaster. The latest is the school kids exams are not getting marked. According to the BBC website the problem is caused by a private company called ETS Europe.

Didn't the mafia say "let everyone wet their beaks". That's what has happened as we sell off bits of education, health, railways and other services. The gangsters in the City make fortunes and the public service workers have to strike to get more than a two and a bit percent pay rise.

Maybe the unions should only contribute funds to MPs who are prepared to dump Brown.